Photoshop World Update – Day 1

So I’ve promised updates while we’re in Boston attending Photoshop World. As we’re midway through Day 1, I finally found a good breaking point to post an update to keep you all informed on some of the awesome things we’re learning at Photoshop World. Here are some of today’s highlights:

• We’re in the company of about 3,000 others here at Photoshop World. In fact, this is the first time Photoshop World has sold out on the east coast.
• The day began with the keynote, which was absolutely hilarious. This year’s theme for the conference is Motown, also referred to as “Photown” throughout the keynote. In fact, we all couldn’t help but laugh when the President of NAPP, Scott Kelby, and several others came out on stage singing a compilation of Motown hits – of course with a Photoshop twist on the lyrics!
• During the keynote we also got to see a sneak peak of some of the features in Photoshop CS3 – and we’re certain you’ll be impressed. Photo merge was probably one of the most memorable highlights of the CS3. John Nack of Adobe demo’d a number of other new features – to include Bridge CS3, Interface changes, along with some new video and 3d abilities in Photoshop. It might be best to visit John Nack’s blog to read more about some of these new features.
• For my first session of the day I got to sit in on learning even more about the Photoshop CS3 beta. The changes are definitely amazing. In fact, I advise you NOT wait – go download your FREE beta copy of Photoshop CS3 NOW! We were told the official version will be released in a few weeks and it’s not going to change much from the beta. Ah heck, it might be worth checking out some of the speaker’s (Deke McClelland) Photoshop CS3 video tutorials on lynda.com. Some are available for free, others require membership. (Oh, by the way, thanks to Deke for offering hundreds of DVD’s to attendees at the lynda.com booth – I got my copy!)
• The Tech expo is filled with tons of fun and innovative technology. We’ve enjoyed playing around with the wacom and cintique touch screens along with a few other cool gadgets. We got to see a demo on Adobe’s soundbooth program – and WOW – it looks like a very promising sound editing program. And here’s a FREE beta version of Soundbooth you can download from Adobe Labs. I was amazed to see how easy it was to remove noise and distractions, like cell phones, from sound files in this program.
• I’ve started a Photoshop World set in flickr to share with you all.

Day 1 is just over halfway complete. Check back later as I update this entry later after the next two sessions I attend: Creative Suite Interactivity and the two hour long Photoshop for Geeks! I guess when it comes to Photoshop it’s okay to be called a geek. 🙂

Update: Yep, being a geek in Photoshop is definitely worth checking out more. Here’s Jeffrey Tranberry’s Photoshop scripting resources.  You can even check out the class page he’s put together yourself.

By the way, it’s pretty darn cold in Boston – in fact, it’s been snowing today!